WikiLeaks launches searchable U.S. historical archive

WikiLeaks on Monday launched a searchable archive containing 1.7 million US State Department documents from 1973-76 that had been officially declassified but were not easily accessible to the public.

The “Public Library of US Diplomacy” brings together the archived memos — referred to as the “Kissinger Cables” after then secretary of state Henry Kissinger — and the 250,000 cables leaked by the anti-secrecy website in 2010.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that even though the 1973-1976 cables were declassified, they previously could only be accessed through the US National Archives in a non-searchable PDF format.

The cables were “hidden in the borderline between secrecy and complexity,” Assange told reporters in Washington via video link from the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he has been holed up since last summer.

A thorough investigation of Posada also could prove embarrassing for the Bush family, since the Cubana Airline bombing was part of a wave of right-wing terrorism that occurred in 1976 under the nose of then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush.

If Posada ever told his full story, he might shed unwelcome light on how much the senior George Bush knew about the terrorist attacks in 1976 and the Iran-Contra operation a decade later, where Posada also showed up.

SNIP...

If the Letelier-Moffitt murders had been solved quickly, there was a danger the revelations could have hurt Republican election chances in 1976, when President Gerald Ford was in a tight race with Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Linking the Chilean government to an audacious terror attack in the heart of the U.S. capital would have revived critical press coverage of the CIA’s role in the overthrow of Chile’s elected socialist government in 1973, a coup that had put in power Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who, in turn, launched “Operation Condor.”

At the time of the Letelier-Moffitt car bombing, Bush’s CIA had evidence in its files that implicated Pinochet’s secret police in the plot to kill Letelier, an outspoken critic of the military regime. But Bush’s spy agency withheld the incriminating information from the FBI and misdirected the investigation away from the guilty parties. (For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.)

2. MORE RECENTLY, THE PRESS PICKED UP TWO WIRE SERVICE
REPORTS AS EVIDENCE OF THE GOC'S FULL EXONERATION OF ANY
COMPLICITY IN THE DEATH OF LETELIER. FIRST, THE PRESS
-- ENCOURAGED BY A GOC BACKGROUNDER -- HEADLINED THE
"NEWSWEEK" PERISCOPE NOTE THAT THE CIA NO LONGER SUSPECTS
THE CHILEAN GOVERNMENT OF INVOLVEMENT IN THE ASSASSINA-
TION, SINCE THE CRUDENESS OF THE BOMB WAS NOT WORTHY OF
A NATIONAL SECRET SERVICE. AND ON OCTOBER 7 THE GOC REPLAYED A
REPORT THAT "DEFENSE AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS DAILY" NAMED
THE SOVIET UNION AS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE KILLING.
IN ITS COMMENTARY THE PRESS THEREFORE NOW TAKES IT FOR
LIMITED OFFICIAL USE